


Little Songs

by TimmyJaybird



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-16
Updated: 2013-07-16
Packaged: 2017-12-20 09:05:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/885474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TimmyJaybird/pseuds/TimmyJaybird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little insertion into the novel, what could have happened after Blackwater, and what Sansa might be experiencing while at the Eyrie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Songs

          Her bedchamber was black as pitch. Sansa barred the door and fumbled through the dark to the window. When she ripped back the curtains, her breath caught in her throat.  
        
The southern sky was aswirl with glowing, shifting colors, the reflections of the great fires that burned below. Green dawns gave way to orange dusks in half a heartbeat. The air itself smelt burnt; embers drifted through the night air like swarms of fireflies.  
        
Sansa backed away from the window, retreating toward the safety of her bed. _I’ll go to sleep,_ she told herself, _and when I wake it will be a new day, and the sky will be blue again. The fighting will be done and someone will tell me whether I’m to live or die_. “Lady,” she whimpered softly, wondering if she would meet her wold again when she was dead.  
        
Then something stirred behind her, and a hand reached out of the dark and grabbed her wrist.  
        
Sansa opened her mouth to scream, but another hand clamped down over her face, smothering her. His fingers were rough and callused, and sticky with blood. “Little bird. I knew you’d come.” The voice was a drunken rasp.  
        
Sansa’s heart leapt, choking her constricting throat as a swirling lance of jade light spit at the stars, filling the room with a green light. She saw him for a moment, all black and green, the blood on his face dark as tar, his eyes glowing like a dog’s in the sudden glare. Then the light faded and he was only a hulking darkness in a stained white cloth, but a burnt image in Sansa’s mind.  
        
“If you scream, I’ll kill you. Believe that.” He took his hand from her mouth. Her breath was coming ragged, her body trembling. She could smell the blood on him, thick like iron in the air, with the burning scent of the wildfire outside. Her eyes darted in the dark, could scarely see that the Hound had a flagon of wine on her bedside table. He took a long pull. “Don’t you want to ask who’s winning the battle, little bird?”  
        
“Who?” she said, far too frightened to defy him.  
        
The Hound laughed. “I only know who’s lost. Me.”  
        
Sansa felt her heart tumble from her throat, down her chest and towards her tummy. _He is drunker than I’ve ever seen him. He was sleeping in my bed, What does he want here?_ “What have you lost?”  
        
“All.” The burnt half of his face was a mask of dried blood, hading the fire’s scars. In the dark it made his face seem unmarred, as if the fire had never kissed him. “Bloody dwarf,” he rasped, “Should have killed him. Years ago.”  
        
“He’s dead, they say.” Sansa thought back to the Queen, and all the ladies who were holed up still. She wondered if anyone of them were dead yet, too. The thought strangely calmed her trembling, though the Hound’s nearly glowing eyes kept sending shivered down her spine.  
        
“Dead? No. Bugger that. I don’t want him dead.” He cast the empty flagon aside. “I want him _burned_. If the gods are good, they’ll burn him, but I won’t be here to see. I’m going.”  
        
_Gods?_ Sansa thought, wondering how the gods could be justified putting her through life as they were, when his words sunk in deeper. “Going?” She tried to wriggle free, but his grasp was iron. He held her arm, his hand hard and hot, like steel as it was hammered into a sword.  
        
“The little bird repeats whatever she hears. _Going_ , yes.”  
        
“Where will you go?” Sansa almost regretted asking as the words left her lips. She did not want to of the Hound going anywhere, as horrifying as he was. She had not forgotten how he had pulled her from the angry mob of the city- how he had protected her from the men who meant to rape her, to tear her body to pieces.  
        
“Away from here. Away from the fires. Go out the Iron Gate, I suppose. North somewhere, anywhere.”  
        
“You won’t get out,” Sansa said. “The Queen’s closed up Maegor’s, and the city gates are shut as well.” The words gave her relief, he wouldn’t truly go, there was no way out.  
        
“Not to me. I have the white cloak. And I have _this_.” He patted the pommel of his sword. “The man who tries to stop me is a dead man. Unless he’s on fire.” He laughed bitterly, and for a fleeting second Sansa wondered what would happen if she tried to stop him. Would he cut her down?  
        
“Why did you come here?”  
        
“You promised me a song, little bird. Have you forgotten?”  
        
She didn’t know what he meant. She couldn’t sing for him now, here, with the sky aswirl with fire and men dying in their hundreds and their thousands. “I can’t,” she said. “Let me go, you’re scaring me.” It wasn’t just his iron grip and burning eyes that scared her, or the wine on his breath. His intention to _leave_ scared her the most, in the pit of her stomach. He may have been Joffrey’s dog, but she could not deny he had been a shield for her as well.  
        
“Everything scares you. Look at me. Look at me.”  
        
The blood still masked the worst of his scars, but his eyes were white and wide and terrifying. The burnt corner os his mouth twitched and twitched again. Sansa could smell him; a stink of sweat and sour wine and stale vomit, and over it all the reek of blood, blood, blood. The stench of war.  
        
She wanted to speak, but her throat closed in on itself, and she could scarcely breathe. He scared her, yes, but there was something else, something buried in the bit of her quaking tummy. Something that feared _for_ him more than of him. Something that wanted to scream and kick and cry that he dare not leave. Not now, not when she needed someone to face Joff with everyday.  
        
His fingers tightened on her arms, smearing blood on her sleeve. Warmth spread through the fabric to her skin, creeping into her veins. The air was heavy in the darkness, thick and stale and suffocating. Sansa reached up to her chest with her free hand, clawing silently at the fabric. Everything felt too heavy.  
        
“I could keep you safe,” he rasped suddenly, breaking the thick silence. She stared at him, at his glowering eyes, though they seemed suddenly not so terrifying. “They’re all afraid of me. No one would hurt you again, or I’d kill them.” He yanked her closer, her tiny body crashing against his hard armor, sending a bruising ache through her. For a moment she thought he meant to kiss her, and she knew he was too strong to fight. She closed her eyes, waiting for it, wanting it to be over, and yet truly not. Wanting to know and being horrified, feeling safer in the unknown, yet empty. Moments passed, and nothing happened. “Still can’t bear to look, can you?” she heard him say. She opened her eyes, saw eyes that suddenly seemed far from the ferocious dog she was accustomed to. These eyes belonged to a wounded animal.  
        
The Hound gave her arm a hard wrench, pulling her around and shoving her down onto the bed. “I’ll have that song. Florian and Jonquil, you said.” His dagger was out, poised at her throat. “Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life.”  
        
Her throat was dry and tight with fear, and every song she had ever known had fled from her mind. _Please don’t kill me,_ she wanted to scream, please don’t. _Don’t hurt me, don’t go_. She could feel him twisting the point, pushing it into her throat, but not enough to pierce her skin. She almost closed her eyes again, but fought the urge off. Instead she stared into the dark, into the whites of his eyes, at his face, at the blood, at the buried scars. She made herself look, and suddenly, he wasn’t nearly so horrifying.  
        
He was a man, horrified of the wildfires outside, covered in blood that Sansa could not identify. She hadn’t wondered until then if it could be his. Her mouth moved as she tried to form a song, but truly nothing came. As she stared at him, she felt the pressure of his blade loosen, until he pulled it away completely, not saying a word.  
        
Some instinct made her lift her hand and cup his cheek with her fingers. The room was too dark for her to see him, but she could feel the stickiness of the blood, and a wetness that was not the blood. Salt and iron mixed on his skin, in the stubble that constantly shadowed his face. Her other hand reached up, running fingers over his scars, wiping blood away. His eyes dimmed, and Sansa wondered if anyone had ever touched his scars. A maester surely, but had his family? Had a woman ever touched caressed them like she might caress a lover’s cheek, or kiss them with rose petal lips?  
        
The Hound loomed over her as she still lay sprawled on the bed. She felt the bed shift as his knee rested on it, as he leaned a bit closer. Sansa forgot about the blood that caked onto her fingers, the tips gently gliding up to his hair, damp from water and fear laced sweat. Her other hand had left his face, now found his broad shoulder, felt the cold chill of his white armor. When she began to slip her hand away, he reached up, grabbed it, kept it firmly against his scars. Her fingers flexed, and Sansa exhaled her held breath, unaware it had been trapped in her throat.  
        
The movement was a blur. Sansa could not tell who was to blame, but she knew she had arched her head and shoulders off the mattress, while the Hound had leaned further down. The kiss she so feared moments ago was not so monstrous now. She trembled as her nails tried to catch on his armor, to keep herself up, but he only pressed her down. Some of the blood on his face smeared onto her nose, but she hardly noticed. The Hound’s stubble tickled her cheeks, where she expected it to scratch her. His tasted like wine and blood, desperate as his rough lips devoured her soft ones.  
        
Sansa’s hand tangled in his hair, she whimpered, confused and yet uncaring. She felt so little, like she could be crushed beneath this hulking man and his heavy plate armor. It was thrilling, in a way she hadn’t expected. Knights kissed their ladies gently, proper knights did, and they didn’t stink of wine and blood and death and war. That was what she believed.  
        
Later, she could remind herself that Sandor Clegane was no proper knight, but eventually she would know that her silly childhood ideas were nothing but that. Ideas. But in that moment, it ceased to matter.  
        
Sansa had no idea truly _how_ to kiss, she just moved her lips the way he did, and tried to cling to him. That seemed more important than trying to move her mouth, holding on to him. Then he couldn’t leave. Her heart clutched itself as she realized that truly was her worst fear in that moment. Not the wildfire, or Stannis’s army, or the blood and his scars. It was that he would leave.  
        
“Little bird,” he rasped, his lips trailing from her’s to her cheek, and her neck. Scars dragged along her skin, blood smeared still, thick and sticky, and Sansa didn’t care. She had no idea what she was feeling, she was still so young at three-and-ten, but her skin felt hot and tight, and she wanted to crawl out of it, to be exposed.  
        
She felt teeth on the neckline of her dress and gasped, whimpered, sounded like a child. Then the feeling was gone, and the weight of the Hound pressing down on her was gone too. She heard him rasp “Little bird” once more, his voice raw and harsh as steel on stone. The bed shifted, and she knew he was standing. She sat up as she heard a thick tearing sound, but before she could speak, the room was filled with the softer sound of retreating footsteps.  
        
Sansa crawled out of the bed, suddenly far more alone than she had ever felt. She found his cloak on the floor, twisted up tight, the white stained by blood and fire. A chill blew through the room, the air cold despite the burning fires, and she was cold. She shook out the torn cloak and huddled beneath it on the floor, shivering, whimpering, wishing he would come back. Wishing she was still on her bed, with time frozen. Wishing she understood what was happening.  
        
Her cheeks were sticky with blood and slick with tears as she listened to the din outside, unable to tell if it was far off or simply down the hall. The world had blurred, and she was alone. Alone to face the Queen and Joffrey if they won the war, alone to face this new king Stannis if they lost.  
        
Heavy footfalls brought her back from her confusion, and in the dark she saw the outline of someone returning, sword in hand. She cowered back, clutched the cloak as if it could protect her, as if it was the Hound and not some silly cloth.  
        
Another streak of wildfire shot up outside, followed by shrilling screams, and she forgot about the cloak, dropping it and scrambling to her knees. He was back, bloody sword in hand, the same bemused scowl on his face he wore so often. He reached down, pulling her up, shoving the cloak off her.  
        
“Leave it,” he commanded, and she did. “It will give us away.”  
        
She didn’t question him, just followed him through the hallways. Bodies lay on the floor, bloodied and dead or dying, and Sansa knew better than to ask whose blood was on his sword. She nearly tripped with every other step, only managing to move because she was pressed so tightly against the Hound, he was nearly carrying her.  
        
They reached the base of the tower and pressed to the walls, waiting for the chaos outside to pass or break, just for a moment. Sansa clutched at his arm, pressing bloody armor against her breasts and tummy. He looked at her, the same look he had given her before he kissed her, those glowering eyes dim, no longer filled with an angry fire, and she tried to reach for his lips with hers, though she was far too short. Still, she stood on her toes, and he turned and gripped her face with his free hand, kissing her far more fiercely this time, making her gasp into his mouth, succumb to his lips’ demands, until she felt like she was falling, slipping and falling on flood through stone, everything fading, even his lips.  
        
Sansa awoke with a start, gasping in the cold night air. She looked around, but the room was dark, the curtains drawn and windows closed. She couldn’t remember where she was, and for a moment thought to call out for the Hound. He would appear from the dark, like a hulking shadow, and he’d be safe, because everyone was terrified of him. No one would hurt her, or he’d kill them.  
        
But as her senses returned, Sansa knew that would not happen. She was in the Eyrie, high above the world, far way from King’s Landing, from the last place she had seen the Hound. Her dream flooded her and she sat up, reaching trembling hands up to touch her lips, her tangled hair. That hadn’t happened, that was not how the night had gone. He had not kissed her, she had not stroked his scars and dimmed his rabid eyes. He had not come back for her, she had spent her night huddled under his war stained cloak, sleeping in her tears and his blood.  
        
She lay back down and rolled over, pulling her blanket up to her chin. She had not been asleep very long, she could feel it. The night was young, and Sansa wanted to dearly to close her eyes and fall back. She wanted to know what would have happened had he come back for her, had he stolen her from the city. Where would they be now?  
        
Where was he now? Was he drunk in the night, with some whore or two, laughing his raspy, wicked laugh? Did he remember the little bird who had he frightened so, but who he had defended, though Sansa never understood why.  
        
She worried her lip, her body shaking, quivering. Something knotted in her tummy, hot and slick, thinking of how he pinned her down, how she had imagined his mouth would feel. And part of her was horrified at herself.  
        
All of her though wanted to slip back into that dream and never wake up again.


End file.
